A Pain in the Whatchamacallit
By Tiny Ruisch
Creating my presentation for the club meeting this month gave me a chance to reflect on how my television viewing habits have changed in the last fifty or sixty years. I remember when I was young and my father bought our first TV. Although I don’t recall the make or model, I remember how big the box was for such a small viewing screen. There were never arguments at our house on what to watch. This wasn’t because of the lack of channels. My father made the decision and the rest of us watched.
After I grew up and joined the Navy, there wasn’t much TV for me. This was because of a lack of channels. There wasn’t any of them in the middle of the ocean. This was long before satellites. We relied on friends and families mailing us VCR tapes of popular shows. That is how I first watched Star Trek, Gilligan’s Island, McHale’s Navy and many others.
Fast forward to the 1990’s when I briefly owned a satellite receiver. The main thing I remember about the dish network is how the darn thing would be mostly static whenever we got a heavy downpour of rain or snow. At the time, I was living in a really small town (population about 1500). The choices were dish or an over the air antenna. This was also the era when I first put in a second phone line for the internet, but that’s a story for another article.
In 2000, four small towns in the area banded together and created The Community Agency (TCA). The TCA was (and still is) a locally owned municipality utility that provided high‑speed telecommunications service. These included high speed internet, cable television and telephone service. This was my first experience with broad band and that is all I’ve used for internet access since.
Today, I’m still using cable services. My television in the living room gets all of the premium services: HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, Starz and the sports channels. People that know me can tell you what a great pricing deal I have. The funny part is that neither the wife or myself seldom watch any of these stations.
In my computer room, where I spend a lot of my time, I’ve installed two over the air antennas which I use to watch and record televison on Next PVR. I get plenty of channels that I like and usually have a show running on one of the four monitors I have installed. Sometimes I find myself watching so much television that I don’t get any reading done. It can be a hard job keeping up with the vast wasteland.
If you’re wondering why I have bored you with this brief history of my television viewing experiences, it is because I’m hoping to entice you to come to this months club meeting. I am going to demonstrate my latest TV viewing method. I recently purchased a Roku Ultra. I will also be showing some interesting web sites for obtaining free television and movies. Come to the meeting. I think you will enjoy learning about this technology.
Thanks for reading.